1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a photographic projector slide, and is particularly concerned with a system for concurrently storing and retrieving information concerning images held in projector slides.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Photography is enjoyed by both professionals and amateurs, and continues to grow in popularity. Film for producing photographic slides is well-known and frequently selected by photographers.
Generally, a positive film image is developed and mounted in a projector slide frame. The projector slide frame is a flat, square member having a rectangular opening or window in its central portion. The frame is constructed from a rigid, economical material such as cardboard or plastic. A photographic film image is positioned in the window between the two panels in any desired manner.
Current methods of identifying images secured in a projector slide include manually printing or writing on a label affixed to a projector slide border. This process is slow and requires legible handwriting. A variation of such labeling includes affixing pre-typed labels to a border. However, large data capacity storage is not practical on such a label. Furthermore, machine readability of such a label is very costly and therefore not practical.
Devices are also made to type information directly on a slide frame border. Such devices are elaborate and have drawbacks which include limited storage capacity, difficulty of changing information and general lack of machine readability.
A conventional digital bar code could also be utilized to identify images held in a projector slide. While a bar code is machine readable, it has a low data capacity storage and it is difficult to change or add information once a bar code is printed.
Magnetic media (often as a stripe) for storing encoded information is well known. Conventional magnetic read and write heads are utilized for detecting and encoding desired information on a magnetic media. Information is easily encoded or changed. Common examples of the use of such magnetic media includes credit cards, band debit cards, tickets and security access cards.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,102,569, issued to Schwartz in July of 1978, describes a sound slide. A slide comprises a frame having a window in which a transparency is mounted in a conventional manner. One side of the slide is extended to accommodate a magnetic layer. There is a similar magnetic layer on the other side of the extended portion. The sound slide includes an arcuate sound track, a spiral-shaped sound track and other sound track configurations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,604, issued to Schwartz in March of 1977, also discloses a sound slide. This sound slide is identical to that described above with reference to the U.S. Pat. No. 4,102,569 patent. The sound track portion is contiguous to the image bearing portion and has spiral, arcuate, parallel and sinuous track configurations.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,238, issued to Dimitracopoulos in May of 1975, discloses an audiovisual slide with an adjacent sound and information track. Each slide includes a slide mount and a sound or information track. The sound or information track is positioned on the projector slide in many different configurations. The sound or information track is parallel to an edge of the projector slide. There is no suggestion in this patent that alpha-numeric data can be digitally encoded onto the sound or information track.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,297, issued to Appeldorn et al. in April of 1977, discloses an apparatus for audio identification of a photographic transparency mounted in a slide frame. A projector is constructed for use with a slide frame clip having a base attached to a slide frame by an adhesive layer. The clip also includes a strip of magnetic tape which is affixed to a base. The magnetic tape is used for sound recording.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,807,851, issued to Knox et al. in April of 1974, is directed specifically to the slide identification clip for use with the system disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,297 patent discussed above. The clip is identical to that described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,876,297. In a second embodiment, a base includes a bottom wall, a front wall, and a rear wall. The clip can be secured to a slide frame without the adhesive used in the other embodiment. A strip of magnetic tape is affixed to the front wall. A magnetic tape extends along the entire width of the slide frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,784,296, issued to Davis in January of 1974, discloses coding means for photographic slides. A coding member is fixed to an edge of a slide frame. Information is optically encoded in digital form onto a coding member. An apparatus identifies specific slides by the codes thereon, and selects the slide for projection.
Consequently, a need exists for improvements in identifying images or transparencies held in a projector slide. It is desirable that a system for storing and retrieving selected information concurrently with a projector slide have large data storage capacity, ease of changing information and machine readability. A system which uses projector slides capable of storing digital alpha-numeric information would be especially desirable.